We used to have scales for these things.
Modest diversion: the most important book I read in high school was S.I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action in a sophomore-level semantics and logic class. That book, along with learning to write proofs in geometry, synthesized the brain that I have today--or have had since that time, I suppose. Understanding that the map is not the territory (Alfred Korzybski, 1931, from Eric Temple Bell) freed me from a lot of misconceptions about how to read the reality around me--although I'm in no wise a proponent of neuro-linguistic programming theory. (Further reading on the subject has indicated that Scientology also sprang from Korzybski's work, more or less—but that's even more madness than NLP.) End diversion.
People like binary semantics--that is, they like opposites. We have a lot of those in English (I'm sticking with the language I know best). Here's a table of some examples:
| Concept | Opposite Concept |
|---|---|
| Cold | Hot |
| Eating | Fasting |
| Love | Hate |
| White | Black |
| Night | Day |
Four of those are wrong.
You see, semantically and logically, the opposite of A (where A is some idea or quality) is "not A." The problem is that we tend to think of compass directions when we formulate these concepts, even though most things don't have direct, compass-style opposites. What is the opposite of peanut butter? Using a not-A formulation, we conclude that everything that isn't peanut butter is its opposite; ball bearings, pheasants, and television reality shows are all the opposite of peanut butter. In a practical sense, peanut butter has no opposites—and doesn't need any.
Let's go back to that table. The opposite of "cold" isn't "hot," it's "not cold." "Warm" is not cold, right? The opposite of "white" is not "black" because both of those are just sensory impressions--and contradictory impressions depending on whether you're seeing transmitted or reflected light. We could change that to the opposite of "red" (the political among you just thought "blue") but given that red is just a wavelength of radiation, the best we can do is a mathematical inversion (there's no such thing as a negative wavelength) so the opposite of "red" is a very long radio wave. That's not nonsense, but it's not useful, either.
We can make a case for "fasting" being the opposite of "eating," but sleeping (and anything else that isn't eating) is also a viable opposite. "Fasting," after all, really means a deliberate choice not to eat for an interval of time; the part where one doesn't eat is simply "not eating."
If we characterize "day" as being when the Sun (or part of the Sun) is above the horizon (viewable), and "night" when the Sun is below the horizon (not viewable), then "night" and "day" are true opposites. "Morning" and "evening" are entirely different concepts not related to the apparent position of the Sun in the sky.
That leaves "love" and its opposite, which would be "not love." "Like" is not "love." You knew that already, right? "Dislike" is also not love—but it's also not "hate."
Somewhere in the middle of all this is the idea that you have no opinion or engagement at all with the topic, which tends to freak out some sorts of people, who can't imagine not caring about something. (The irony is that there are a lot of things they don't care about, but as they haven't recognized it, the dichotomy isn't apparent to them. They'll figure it out they both understand and can spell "dichotomy"—which for some of them, will be precisely never.)
Back in the 1980s or 90s there was a small population of waitresses who would ask after your dining experience with the phrase "did you just love it?" My answer was always a polite "yes," because I didn't want to ruin the rest of the lady's day with a dissertation about how one shouldn't invest emotion in inanimate objects, and that while the particular meal was reasonably satisfying, no meal would ever rise to that level. Instead I gritted my mental teeth, replied in the positive, and waited for them to go away.
I didn't like the experience, but I didn't hate it.
These days a middle- or high-school student might ask if one likes Justin Bieber. If the answer is "no," the immediate follow up is "why do you hate Justin Bieber?" (See how "hate" somehow became the opposite of "like?") The idea that there's a middle ground in which one has absolutely no opinion seems foreign to teens—and to some adults, too. Too many adults, in my opinion.
(For the record: where this Bieber person is concerned, I'm displeased with his various public antics, and as I haven't heard any of his music, I have no opinion. I intend to go on having no opinion.)
Many people profess to hate guns, but I think they hate what some people do with guns (to wit: shoot other people). Hating inanimate objects is a sign of mental illness, or at least of modest derangement.
Many people profess to hate followers of other religions or political persuasions. While I'm not one to join hands in a circle and sing "Kumbaya," I think that sort of hate is a sign of derangement as well. Hate, like fear, usually causes one to make bad choices. We've had enough of those already.
We slip the word "hate" into our communications far too easily—perhaps because the media likes to use superlatives when describing the issues or events of the day—and we tend to say it when we don't mean it. I certainly hope "hate" isn't what's meant, since I worry that the mental processes of someone who really hates mustard or certain patterns of plaid might be a little scary to observe up close.
The world is not an exercise in polar opposites. It's not an exercise in extremes. Almost everything we do is somewhere in the broad middle of the hypothetical bell curve, and making sure our language follows that seems like a pretty good idea to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment